Dr Paul Allen

Regard Their Masters as Worthy of All Honor? Why is an article like this important? Many unbelievers think the Bible supports even promotes slavery. We all agree slavery is wrong. Therefore, the Bible should not be ignored as a guide to life. With that rejection in mind, this was the basis taken by an Australian Prime Minister to legislate Homosexual marriage - Kevin Rudd ignored all homosexual sanctions in the Bible based on the Bible's supposed support of slavery. A convenient method to wash one's hands of any responsibility. Look closer, Kevin. Paul issues his command to “bondservants” who are “under a yoke” and have “masters.” The word translated as “bondservants” is the Greek term doulos, the standard term for slaves used throughout the NT. These particular slaves are “under a yoke.” A literal yoke is a “frame used to control working animals” (BDAG, s.v. ζυγός). The word appears here and elsewhere to describe the condition of slaves in the Roman world. Such slaves were the...

Your darkness can one day bring someone light. A person who’s been through a divorce has the compassion and words needed to help somebody going through a divorce. A person who’s been through abuse, rape, or an addiction can truly understand how to help someone else in a similar situation. And because you made it, God will cause your wounds to glow in the dark of somebody else’s life. And when you begin to share your story with them, hope will get in their soul, and they will start to believe that they can make it.   Don’t waste what you’ve gone through or allow it to make you bitter. If God lets you walk through it, it’s because He’s still God, and He has a plan. On five different occasions, the Apostle Paul was beaten with 39 stripes. That’s 195 scars on his body. Paul said, “Three times I was beaten with rods. One time, I was stoned and left for dead. Three times, I suffered shipwrecks. I knew what it was to be afloat in the ocean a full day and a full night. I thought I wou...

While bantering about Paul’s comments about women in 1 Timothy 2, we easily miss how he uses Artemis to contextualize his message for the Ephesian church. After 2,000 years, it’s no wonder we would miss the subtle ways he addresses the issues facing Timothy. I should say “subtle” to us, but his original audience would not have missed his points. How can we expect to pick up what Paul throws down today? Insert Sandra Glahn’s Nobody’s Mother: Artemis of the Ephesians in Antiquity and the New Testament. As I explained before, Glahn makes a remarkable contribution to the church. Her study is unique because it is comprehensive yet accessible when explaining Artemis in her Ephesian context. Based on ancient evidence, no other god or goddess besides Zeus, enjoyed Artemis's renown. Naturally, we’d expect such background to influence the church in Ephesus (where Timothy lived) and to shape Paul’s letter to them. Why Paul Says What He Does Contextualization has multiple parts. We want to exa...

In 1 Corinthians 14:34 Paul says, “Women should be silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak but should be subordinate, as the law also says.” 1 Timothy 2:11–14 raises perhaps more problems: “Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent.” These two passages constitute a genuine puzzle for modern readers, not least in light of the following four factors. First, Paul’s statements in 1 Corinthians 11:3–16 presuppose that women will take a full speaking part in public worship and prayer. This at once suggests that his hesitation in 14:34 cannot be understood to be a universal prohibition for women not to speak in public worship. (The one problem of these verses is that Paul does appear to invoke the argument that “man was not made from woman, but woman from man” in 11:9. We shall try to address this later.) Second, in Paul’s epistles, at least half a dozen women do have leadership posi...

I am convinced that when many of us think about the Apostle Paul, we think of someone who was so bold and courageous that the Lord could not help but accomplish great things in and through him. We see Paul through our rose-coloured glasses; we are convinced that, while we struggle with boldness in speaking about Christ or in taking a stand for Him, Paul did not.  After all, the Bible portrays Paul as one who regularly preached in the face of great opposition (Acts 13:44–46; 14:1–3; 17:22–32), who boldly confronted his adversaries (13:8–11), and who made a practice of telling his listeners exactly what they needed to hear rather than what they wanted to hear (20:20, 27). But there are passages in the New Testament that suggest that Paul may not, in fact, have been a naturally bold person in and of himself. In 1 Corinthians 2:3, for instance, Paul admits that when he was with the church in Corinth, he was with them in “weakness and in fear and much trembling.”  And in 2 Corinth...

There is no way out . She knows such bitter, biting thoughts are wrong and shameful, but her friend’s comment cut so deeply. Her mind keeps returning to the moment, reliving the wound. She feebly tries to turn her thoughts elsewhere, but the offence seems to surround her like a fog. And how do you fight a fog? He, too, is well aware that he’s walking down a worthless path. He’s been here before — this thought, leading to that fantasy, producing these seemingly unconquerable desires. Maybe he could have escaped if he had turned around immediately, but he feels he has gone too far. He has plucked and felt the fruit; how can he not now taste it? No way out. Who hasn’t felt the force of these words amid bitterness, lust, or a thousand other temptations? And who hasn’t succumbed to their dark suggestion? If some lies have slain their thousands, this lie has slain its ten thousand. Every Temptation Escapable We are hardly the first to feel trapped, surrounded, and hemmed in by the power of s...

Watching David Koch skewer evangelical pastor Guy Mason on Australia’s morning show Sunrise was an excruciating experience.[1] Andrew Thorburn had been dismissed for his association with the City on a Hill church just a couple of days after being appointed chief executive of a professional Australian football club.  The reason given was that the church held to traditional Christian positions on abortion and homosexuality. These beliefs were now declared beyond the pale for someone prominent in Australian public life. Thorburn would not discuss his beliefs with the media, so Sunrise invited the pastor of Thorburn’s church, Guy Mason, to be interviewed instead. I could not be more sympathetic to Mason because I have been through many media interviews and you always, always come home thinking of things you should have said. It is easy for the rest of us to watch the recording and imagine from the tranquillity of our easy chairs better responses to the interviewer. I am more interested...

What particular abilities has God given you? When God wove you together before you were born, and when he made you new in Christ, he chose gifts for you — special resources, experiences, and abilities for you to steward and practice. Do you believe that? If so, do you know what they are? Can you name some specific ways you’re striving to use them and grow in them? If you believe in Jesus, he has given you something of his power and ability. Whoever you are, and however “gifted” you feel compared to others, you have abilities from God that are meant to make a difference in the lives of others. Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. Each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. (1 Corinthians 12:4–7) In everyone means “in you.” To each means “to you.” Where Abilities Wither The reality is that while al...

 “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” (Eph. 6:12) What comes to mind when you think of spiritual warfare? Perhaps images of Linda Blair’s contorted face or spinning head from the movie The Exorcist. Those who are more biblically minded might think of Jesus’ casting out a legion of demons, sending them into a herd of pigs to plunge over a cliff. Or maybe you can find no other explanation for some experience of dark oppression, so you start to consider something demonic. But The Exorcist was fiction, and Jesus’ casting out demons was something that happened back in a unique period of time. Your experience of evil oppression could just as easily be your overactive imagination. BASIC TO CHRISTIAN DISCIPLESHIP AND MISSION Why bother with spiritual warfare? The reason is twofold. One, it is evident throughout the B...